Wednesday, October 26, 2011

yarn & books (& repeat)




Two great things that have come from spending lots of time sitting on my butt and nursing are a reintroduction to knitting and reading for fun.  Pure fun, people.  I have spent most of my book-time in the last 6 years reading for learning.  Which is great, and I still do lots of that.  But, boy oh boy have I enjoyed the novels, the memoirs, the research just for the heck of it that I've allowed myself to do in the past 5 months.  

The knitting is of a more practical nature.  My initial thought was wool hats for the whole family (minus Stevie :) ) by winter time.  So, I started with the Sly baby, working on the Umbilical Cord Hat from Stitch'N'Bitch.  I made it once ... too small.  Passed it on to a newly born baby girl.  Changed up the pattern to fit my boys big noggin, and right as I came to attaching the I-cord, or "umbilical cord"tassle, I popped it on his head to see how it looks, and well, I just don't like it.  Even with the increase to the pattern, it still doesn't cover his ears and it slides up after wearing it a while.  I should have gone even bigger but ... I didn't.  I've decided I'm just going to unravel it and put the whole hat on hold for now.  He's got a precious Peruvian chucho which works great anyways.  Moving on, I cast on last night for a bright purple soaker instead.  Papa Bear wasn't thrilled with the purple yarn for his little boy, but I think he's gonna look like a rock star with this on, some shooting star legwarmers, and that awesome dinosaur hat of his!

Back to the books:  I flew through Inconsolable, as you may know from my last post.  When I started reading this book, Papa Bear referred to it as my "depressing book".  The premise is after all a woman's tale of suffering with Postpartum Depression and a colicky, refluxy baby.  But I'm telling you this book is hilarious at times.  And more importantly, it is real.  Allow me to offer just one more passage from it (I know I offered a few in the last post) about the pitfalls of one's expectations for motherhood:
Maybe I was stuck in some kind of hipness trap (which is funny, because I'm about as hip as a Kansas city reference librarian), that there are other kinds of pitfalls.  My body will go back exactly the way it was.  Of course we'll still have sex when we're parents!  My kid will not wear something like that.I'm not going to carry a bag with bunnies on it, unless a bunny is the new Gucci logo.  I'm still going out to shows.  We are not watching Barney in this house.  
But the truth is you will become the parent you are, and who knows what that is?  Perhaps you will do inconceivably dorky things.  Perhaps you will begin wearing puce polyvinyl pants instead of tasteful seperates from Petite Sophisticate because they are more vomit-repellant.  Perhaps you will out grow your DIY Tank Girl tee shirts when you milk comes in, and you will wear periwinkle cotton nursing sweaters because your next-door neighbor gives them to you and they're comfortable and free of charge.  Perhaps you will set aside your cherished avocations (transexual fetish photography, herotica, competitive checkers); perhaps you will discover new ones.  Perhaps you will become a single parent if you are partnered; perhaps you will become partnered, suburban and domestic after all if you are single.  Perhaps your great-aunt will break her hip and come live with you, displacing your life partner's klezmer bandmates who've been crashing in your guest room, and you will turn around twice and find yourself the very model of unpaid domestic caregiving, and you will scream and cry and go to bed at seven every night from sheer exhaustion.
Who gives a fuck?  You'll do what you can.  

As I totally recommend this book, I should also share Ingman's own advice that this is not a book for pregnant first-time-moms with no history of depression or mental illness (read it after baby arrives), and also not for those bothered by the occasional drop of the F-bomb.  I really liked it though, and think it a wise read for any mother-baby care provider (or wannabes, like myself) and I can only imagine that it would have struck me as even more poignant if I had suffered with PPD.

I have now started reading Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert and am lovin' it so far.  I put this book off for a while after all the hype of Eat, Pray, Love becoming a movie and staring Julie Roberts, and during that time I forgot how much Elizabeth Gilbert's own voice resonates with my heart.  I, too, am a skeptic of the institution of marriage ("Marriage is a friendship recognized by the police" says Robert Louis Stevenson), but I am a huge fan of intimate, romantic, life long partnership.  This book is Gilbert's exploration of matrimony as she prepares for her own, government forced, marriage.  

I'm linking up, a little late, with Ginny at Small Things for Yarn Along.  If you want some knitting inspiration, check out all the other lovely folks sharing their hand knits on her page today!

1 comment:

  1. Committed is on my reading list. I enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love and I'm really interested to see where the story went.

    ReplyDelete

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